A judge has handed a rare life sentence for attempted murder to a first offender who broke into an elderly woman’s apartment, raping and stabbing her.

She survived Stalinist Russia and World War II, coming to this “wonderful country” for a better life.

But the elderly woman says she suffered “a shattering brutal blow” when Michael Anderson broke into her west Toronto apartment to stab and rape her five years ago when she was 76.

On Friday, Ontario Superior Court Justice Todd Ducharme sentenced the 30-year-old labourer to life — rare for a first offender like him convicted of aggravated sexual assault and attempted murder.

The judge said the stark horror of the crime shows Anderson to be an ongoing danger to the public. The one-time bus driver showed no reaction.

Calling the victim one of the most credible and courageous witnesses he has seen, Ducharme read out her victim impact statement.

“Never in my long life have I ever felt so insulted and humiliated,” wrote the grandmother, who cannot be named and was not in court Friday.

“Brutal violence was done to my soul and body.”

In an attack that lasted at least an hour, Anderson slashed her face, raped her twice, stabbed her three times in the abdomen, causing her to lose one-eighth of her blood.

The attack began in the early hours of Oct. 15, 2005, when he snuck into the sleeping woman’s highrise apartment.

Oddly, Anderson had shortly before given a statement to police about a bar fight he witnessed.

At about 3:45 a.m., police officers dropped him off at the woman’s building, where he was staying the night in his grandfather’s unit.

By 4 a.m., the woman was awakened as Anderson entered her home. She called out to her daughter, thinking it might be her.

Then she saw Anderson. The terrified woman asked him what he wanted.

“He replied that he wanted sex,” Ducharme said.

“I’m an old person,” she protested.

“Stop talking,” replied Anderson, as he brandished a knife from her kitchen.

“If you want to live, I came for sex.”

She cried out, but he warned her: “If you are going to scream I’ll kill you.”

As Anderson undressed, the woman grabbed her phone to call 911. But he cut the cord and slashed her.

Then the rapes began.

Despite the fact she didn’t resist, he stabbed her three times in the abdomen, penetrating her bowel.

At last, she managed to break free and ran to her balcony, closing the door and yelling for help.

Anderson fled.

During his trial, Anderson tried to pin the blame on his cognitively impaired uncle.

He claimed he was at his grandfather’s apartment when his uncle came in, naked and bloody, carrying a knife and reporting that he had just come from a fight.

Anderson said he lent his uncle his shorts and T-shirt — thus explaining how the victim’s blood got on his clothes — and together they walked back to woman’s apartment, where the uncle retrieved his garments and left.

Prosecutor Rick Nathanson, who asked for life, said in an interview he “always found the facts in this case chilling and awful.”

Defence lawyer Indra Bhaggan sought 12 to 15 years.

Toronto police Det. Christine Long said the victim has since “had to move and change everything in her life to feel safety. And she still doesn’t feel safe.”

In her statement, the ailing woman said Canada became her second Motherland. “I fell in love with this wonderful country.”

However this attack brought “fatal unpredictability.”

“I wake up at night in fear, cold sweat and see in front of me the picture of what happened in every detail,” she wrote.

“However, I do not feel hatred toward that ‘person’ who assaulted me. I am more tortured by a feeling of disappointment that this could have happened in such (a) wonderful country as Canada.”